UChicago/Hyde Park = Dangerous?

JHS
Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:15:18 +0000

There are threads on this topic all the time. I don’t know why a four-year-old one got resurrected suddenly, but since it’s now up and active while people are deciding where to go to college, here goes (again):


Objectively, you are not going to find any good evidence that the University of Chicago campus or Hyde Park in general has more street crime in any meaningful way than you would find at or around equivalent urban universities. That includes Harvard, MIT, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Berkeley, Georgetown, George Washington, USC, Johns Hopkins, and, yes, Northwestern, too. Some of them, including Harvard, seem maybe to have a little more crime, but that doesn’t seem to bother people about Harvard.


The kind of street crime that happens at all those places isn’t the end of the world, either. It’s not rape, murder, or mayhem; it’s bike thefts and the occasional mugging or pocket-picking where someone loses $20. In the last 40 years, exactly one University of Chicago person – a grad student – lost his life in a street crime incident. The perpetrator was a one-man crime spree from miles away; he was caught within days after a massive manhunt. In a city with an awful murder rate, the violent death of a University of Chicago grad student near (not on) campus (and south of campus, not in Hyde Park) was big, big news.


Rural or suburban universities may have less street crime. Bikes and laptops still get stolen, but muggings may never happen. Yet there are other, equally serious dangers there. University of Chicago students rarely drive drunk, or ride in a car with a drunk driver, mainly because they don’t use cars much. Out in the boonies, don’t fool yourself that your kid isn’t going to be in a car with a drunk driver from time to time. And people drink more because, frankly, there’s less that’s interesting to do besides drink. What’s more, the rate of mishaps with farm equipment and farm animals is extremely low in Hyde Park, and people don’t fall down hills or gorges much.
No matter where they go to college, the real risks to students come not from the “townies” in the surrounding community, but from each other. The vast, vast majority of the terrible things that happen to students are done by other students. And that DOES include rape, murder, and mayhem, unfortunately, as well as lots of those stolen laptops. And in that regard, the University of Chicago, while far from perfect, is probably better than 99% of other colleges.
To speak plainly, what makes Hyde Park seem “dangerous” to some is not that there is some objective high level of threat, but simply that, not Hyde Park itself (which is affluent and diverse), but nearby neighborhoods are inhabited exclusively by low-income people of African and Mexican descent. And while one has to walk some meaningful distance to get from any of those neighborhoods to the middle of campus, there are no walls or moats, and it’s a free country, so if you are around the University of Chicago sometimes you see poor people who are Black or Hispanic. Not breaking any laws or anything, or even hanging out usually, mostly just passing through.


Some people get freaked out by that, and feel threatened. It’s not rational, but it may be a real feeling. Most of the people who feel that way are whites or Asians who come from suburban or rural places where you don’t see non-white poor people that much, at least ones you don’t know personally. Most of the people who feel that way get over it in a few weeks or months, but some never do. (People who are familiar with the nice neighborhoods in Brooklyn, like Park Slope, will immediately recognize Hyde Park as pretty much a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn, but less crowded, with more trees and fewer hills, and in Chicago.)

If you think you are the kind of person who can’t get over it, you probably should consider going elsewhere for college, because it’s no fun to feel frightened and uncomfortable where you live. If, however, you are like most people, you will laugh a year from now when you remember how much energy you wasted worrying about whether Hyde Park was dangerous.